Perhaps it is time to be concerned.
As I have documented many times, the corruption on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) has been (and continues to be) appalling.
Since 1994, Republicans under Gingrich, DeLay, Bush and the rest of their power-hungry elites have protected a system of human trafficking, forced sex, sweatshops, labor abuse and money laundering on this rogue Western Pacific US Territory.
Recently, I have been hopeful that Justice is finally on its ways for the long-suffering guest workers of the CNMI. I’ve recently written that the House passed the Minimum Wage Bill and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will soon hold a Hearings on the CNMI. This should be good news, but over the weekend I’ve read some things that cause me great concern. I’m worried that the guest workers are about to be sold out again.
We need to make some noise and for that, I will need your help...
Earlier this week I wrote a fairly hopeful Diary about my meeting with David Cohen, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Department for Insular Affairs. Since the end of last year his team has been very busy preparing the answers to 24 questions from the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. According to the Saipan Tribune this looked to be a hopeful development:
The questionnaire, which was sent to the Department of the Interior last month, is divided into four categories: socio-economic; federal-CNMI initiatives; criminal activity/law enforcement; and national security/terrorism.
The Senate committee, chaired by New Mexico senator Jeff Bingaman, gave particular weight on socio-economics (11 items) and national security/terrorism (10 questions) categories. [snip]
The committee wants the DOI to "update the following socio-economic estimates/indicators used in prior reports of the Initiative, and present them in graphs showing trends from 1980 through 2005":
- total CNMI population, with a breakdown of U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens;
- birthplace of CNMI residents: foreign born, mother-CNMI born, and mother born elsewhere; and
- total number of guests workers, GDP, per capita income, unemployment rate.[snip]
Bingaman's committee also wants to know if there was any investigation made on the May 2006 report by the Department of the Interior's Ombudsman that "we have long suspected that a portion of the fees charged by recruiters in China were being kicked-backed to the factories here in Saipan." [snip]
Question 14 asks: "How does the presence of organized crime elements from Japan, China, and Russia in the CNMI compare with that of Guam?"
All in all, this looked like the right questions were being asked to set up the need to extend US labor, immigration and custom laws to the CNMI.
This is a long overdue step and the bare minimum requirement for a new legislation to correct the long standing problems on the Marianas Islands. And I am looking forward to these responses from the Bush DOI’s Office of Insular Affairs becoming public information.
Since it became clear that the 110th Congress is leaning towards extending US laws to the CNMI, the push-back efforts have begun. It is a full-court press and I think we may need to help stiffen the backbones of some of our Senators as they examine this issue.
The Pirates on Saipan and their GOP allies are pushing-back on two fronts.
One is to attack the minimum wage on the grounds that the House Bill did not also extended coverage to American Samoa. The Right-wing noise machine has been having great fun with this and ascribing all manor of hypocrisy to Democrats over the talking point. The latest is a Wall Street Journal article that starts by making a very loose connection between Nancy Pelosi and tuna companies and then—through amazing leaps of fantasy and fancy—connects her (and the Democratic Party) to a notorious labor abuse case on America Samoa involve a Korean owned factory in 2001:
What is even more ironic about Ms. Pelosi's behavior is that the region she is attempting to exempt has historically treated its workers poorly, with many instances of human rights abuses, and paid them pittances, besides.
Look no further than the story of Kil Soo Lee. In 1998, the Korean national incorporated the Daewoosa garment factory with the help of Togiola Tulafono, then lieutenant governor. (Mr. Tulafono is now governor.) Mr. Lee kept roughly 300 women from Vietnam as slaves; he was convicted in 2003 on 14 counts, including extortion, money laundering, conspiring to violate the civil rights of others and holding workers to a condition of involuntary servitude. Federal prosecutors called the Daewoosa case the biggest "modern-day slavery" case in U.S. history.
The Daewoosa case was very bad, but it was prosecuted. And more than that, American Samoa has taken steps to ensure that it would never happen again. If the WSJ wanted to do ten minutes of reporting, they could have found dozens of stories to refute the basic trust of the hack job on both Pelosi and American Samoa. I’ve read lots of them, but I thought this editorial in the Marianas Variety said it best:
Why is American Samoa exempted from the looming federal wage hike?
Simple. Because it doesn’t have the same labor and immigration problems that the CNMI has become notorious for since the late 1980s.
True, American Samoa also allowed a garment factory to bring in alien workers (from Vietnam), but after a class action suit was filed by the abused workers, which was widely publicized in the U.S. media, then-Gov. Tauese Sunia proclaimed in early 2001 that he would not allow any more special immigration exceptions for garment factories. [snip]
The major sources of income in American Samoa remain the tuna canneries, the local government and remittances from Samoans overseas. The majority of the "alien" workers employed by the canneries are from neighboring Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa. It’s as if Guam were "importing" Chamolinian workers from the CNMI.
Like the CNMI, in short, American Samoa is also exempted from federal minimum wage and immigration laws, but unlike this commonwealth, the territory never used the same privilege — and I’m being polite here — in a manner that will eventually require federal intervention.
The Pirates of Saipan and their Republican allies on the mainland will continue to cite the exemption to the minimum wage law for American Samoa as an example of Democratic hypocrisy. The result has been a promise by Speaker Pelosi to extend the law to American Samoa as well. This is not the outcome the pirates had in mind.
What they want is to establish their own wage review board, just like their neighbors have on American Samoa. A board controlled (for now) by their pals in the Bush Labor Department. What they really want is one more chance to control the immigration, custom and labor laws of the CNMI without Federal interference.
The tactic is delay (as learned from DeLay) is the second front in the effort to push-back on finally extending US laws to the CNMI.
Despite the clarity of the problem, despite twenty plus years of injustice, the old guard of the CNMI are sending delegations to Washington to plea for more studies, more reviews, more special exemptions from US laws, more inaction and more delay.
While I understand many of the fears and arguments from the folks who are worried about change to an economy rooted in exploitation and injustice, I am not swayed by their crocodile tears.
They make a very old argument. It has been used for centuries. From the slave based economy of the American South, to Apartheid, to the gas guzzling economy of the Detroit-base auto industry, history is filled with the pleas and arguments for more time and studies and delays made by the folks profiting from an exploitive economic system.
I do not have a lot of sympathy for their warnings of doom. Historically, they have always been wrong. Change always creates new markets and new economic opportunities. Still, it is scary to change and it is certain that some of the Pirates of Saipan will be losers in a economic system based on laws and justice
But for me, the long-term cost of injustice paid in ruined individual lives is more important than the temporary costs of moving away from a failed and corrupt economic system. And I know that creating a sustainable economy for everyone will be far better than the current system. We just need the courage to get there.
Now, do the members of the 110th Congress have the courage to make the change?
In the scheme of things, the CNMI and all the Pacific Islands are very low on the radar. If we do not pay attention to this issue, justice will once again be delayed and denied.
I think we need to keep this on the radar. After all, the CNMI/Abramoff issue had an impact in November and we defeated 20 of the Abramoff 65, a group of Republican candidates in 2006 I identified as having multiple connections to Jack Abramoff. I think we owe the guest workers on the CNMI some justice.
We also owe the indigenous peoples of the CNMI, American Samoa and the other Pacific Islands the opportunity to have a sustainable and thriving economy that is not rooted in exploitation, corruption and environmental destruction. We also owe them a system with some measures of local control to protect their unique cultures from extinction.
In fact, the exemptions to US labor, immigration and custom laws were created to help these local populations protect, maintain and preserve their cultures. This has failed BIG TIME on the CNMI.
The population is officially pegged at 84,500, but may be well over 92,000 when illegal immigrants are factored in. Less than 25% are indigenous to the islands. Back in 1980 roughly 70% of the population was made up of the local Chamorro people and descendents from the Carolinian islands. The exemptions seemed to have worked on American Samoa were most of the 59,000 plus citizens are primarily ethnic Samoans.
The guest workers on the CNMI were not the only ones sold out by the system of importing workers to fill the growing sweatshops, brothels, construction and domestic jobs on the Territory. This system also sold out local control and the cultures of the Chamorro and Carolinian peoples.
The architect of that sell-out is now the Governor of the CNMI. His name is Benigno (Ben) Fitial. And he is scheduled to testify (along with others) before the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources:
WHEN: Thursday, Feb. 8 at 9:30 a.m.
WHAT: Full committee hearing
WHERE: Dirksen 366
WHY: To hear testimony on labor, immigration, law enforcement and economic conditions in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Witnesses
The Hon. Dirk Kempthorne (invited)
Secretary of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior
The Hon. Pedro Tenorio, Resident Representative
Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas
Ambassador Hadyn Williams, Covenant Negotiator
San Francisco, CA
Ms. Lauri Ogumoro
Karidat (a local social services NGO) Saipan, MP
The Hon. Benigno R. Fitial, Governor.
Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas
The Hon. David M. Walker (invited)
Comptroller General General Accounting Office
Mr. Herman Q. Guerrero, Covenant Negotiator
Tigard, OR
Mr. Juan T. Guerrero, President
Saipan Chamber of Commerce
Saipan, MP
Fitial’s connections to the Abramoff scandal go back to Jack’s earliest days as a lobbyist in 1995. Back then he worked for the Tan Family, helping to run their empire of sweatshops on the CNMI. And he was running those sweatshops when the company received the highest fines for labor violations in US History from the Bush the Elder’s Department of Labor. The rumor that surfaced in Fitial’s 2001 race for Governor was that he was paid a bribe by the Tan Family to pass a law allowing foreign investment in the first CNMI Legislator in 1986. While the rumor was the basis of a fun lawsuit to read (PDF) it was never proved nor refuted. The laws allowing the Tan Family to set up the sweatshops were passed and Fitial left the CNMI government to work for the family.
He stayed on the job until Mike Scanlon and Ed Buckham traveled to the CNMI in late 1999 to bribe some CNMI Representatives to elect Fitial Speaker of the CNMI House. More details can be found here.
Perhaps the folks at the DOJ can interview Fitial while he is in town. Better yet, perhaps they can indict him.
I am also concerned about Herman Guerrero. A person by that name was Abramoff’s main contact on the CNMI during the early years of his contract (1995-98). It may be the same fellow, a relative or a different Herman Guerrero.
I’m also concerned that there does not seem to be anybody speaking for the needs of the guest workers, with the exception of the representative from Karidat. I might suggest getting somebody from the growing Dekada movement (emphasis added):
THE lawyer for Dekada cites the failure of the Fitial administration and previous CNMI leadership to raise the islands’ minimum wage of $3.05 an hour and improve the immigration status of long-term alien residents for the sweeping federal wage hike measure and renewed calls for a federal takeover of the commonwealth’s immigration.
Stephen Woodruff, a former legal counsel to the local Senate, said for 10 years the CNMI leadership has had the opportunity to increase the minimum wage "in a way that makes sense," one that is easy for businesses to adapt to, but it failed to do so.
"And the fact of the matter is that the CNMI economy is as bad as it is right now partly because of the refusal to increase the minimum wage," Woodruff told the estimated 500 workers mostly from Bangladesh, the Philippines, China, Korea, Nepal and Sri Lanka who converged in front of the Kristo Rai Church and the Horiguchi Building in Garapan on late Friday afternoon for a peaceful rally.
Dekada staged the rally to show support to the pending measure to increase the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour and to further push for improved civil, legal and immigration status for long-term alien residents in the CNMI. [snip]
One of those workers, Elias Magabo, who has been working on Saipan for 21 years, said he wants an increase in the minimum wage and a green card, having a 13-year-old U.S. citizen son. [snip]
Before 7 p.m. on Friday, after converging in front of the Kristo Rai Church, Dekada members marched to the Fiesta Resort and Spa in Garapan where David Cohen was to address members of the Saipan Chamber of Commerce.
The Dekada members, however, were not able to have a dialogue with Cohen as they immediately went back to the parking lot of Kristo Rai Church after reaching the hotel façade. [snip]
Dekada president Bonifacio Sagana, in a prepared speech before Dekada members, said the gathering of workers on Friday only proves that the dream of long-term alien residents of improved labor and immigration status lives on. [snip]
"This is what Dekada is all about — a movement that promotes responsible advocacy of things we believe we are rightfully entitled to. Our dream will never die nor should we slow down. We have become stronger...The smell of success is in the air," he said.
Remedios Montuarto, 47, who was among the hundreds of alien workers who joined the Dekada rally, said all she and her husband want is to get IR status, having two children born in the CNMI and who are therefore U.S. citizens.
I’m a little embarrassed that Cohen could find the time to meet with me in Washington DC, but could not find the time to meet with guest workers who went looking for him. These folks have been on the CNMI for ten years or more without any rights—and some now have children born into American citizenship. That would strike me a problem to resolve. And a group Cohen should be talk to. So should the 110th Congress.
Perhaps it is because the guest workers and their children almost outnumber the indigenous population by 2 to 1, that the Dekada rally attracted more people than last Friday’s pro-status quo rally organized by the Pirates of Saipan and those who fear change more than they long for justice:
THE over 200 people who took part in a peaceful rally organized by the group "Our Commonwealth" on Friday afternoon were encouraged to prepare for the Feb. 24 visit to Saipan of two U.S. Senate staffers who will be here to gather more input for a bill that would federalize the CNMI immigration system.
Our Commonwealth wants the U.S. Congress to open a dialogue and consult first with the CNMI before passing measures that affect the islands, including an increase in the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour and a takeover of local immigration. [snip]
The visit of Senate staffers Allen Stayman and Josh Johnson will take place after the Feb. 8 oversight hearings on the CNMI by the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which has oversight over the CNMI and other U.S. insular areas.
As they should, Stayman and Johnson will travel to the CNMI to follow up on the hearings. Now Al Stayman has been working to bring justice to the CNMI for decades. I am glad he has a seat at the table. But I am concerned about the pressure that will be applied for a delay in extending US laws to the CNMI. We can not allow that to happen on our watch. We can not allow fear to trump justice yet again.
Just last week the Pirates of Saipan sent a delegation to DC to lobby the 110th Congress to step back from the minimum wage and other long overdue reforms for the CNMI, their effort included discussions with Congressman George Miller (emphasis added):
THE author of the federal minimum wage bill, Congressman George Miller, was very receptive to the CNMI’s concerns about the measure, according Finance Secretary Eloy Inos who was a member of the local delegation that was in Washington, D.C. last week. [snip]
"Mr. Miller is very cognizant of our concerns and issues and we’re hoping that there’s something that will come out of this for the NMI," Inos said, describing their trip as "very constructive."
He added that the CNMI delegation had 18 meetings with U.S. congressional members and staffers.
"We talked to them and they listened to us. The CNMI needs to have better and more dialogue with Congress. We have to take the initiative and make the effort to do it and, if we do, there will be people who will be willing and ready to help us," he said.
Inos described the meeting with Miller as a "landmark."
This article made me nervous. I know I’ll be calling Miller’s office this week to learn more about the visit (and hopefully calm my late night case of nerves). And I wonder who else the delegation visited in DC (hey Doolittle did you get a chance to catch up with your old sweatshop buddies—just asking).
A big reason for my concern is the members of the CNMI delegation. They are so connected to the system of human trafficking, forced sex, sweatshops, labor abuse and money laundering on the CNMI that I’m surprised Willie Tan wasn’t leading the delegation. Perhaps he doesn’t have to now that he owns the CNMI Governor and Fitial is appointing other former Tan Family employees and allies to positions of power:
"This is a landmark dialogue that we established...the first that we were able to establish (with Miller) because no one so far was able to meet with the congressman about these issues," Inos said [snip]
The CNMI government is expected to send another delegation to Washington to testify in a Senate committee hearing scheduled for Feb. 8.
Besides Villagomez and Tenorio, the CNMI delegation included Attorney General Matthew Gregory; the governor’s special trade representative Richard A. Pierce; Senate President Joseph M. Mendiola, Covenant-Saipan; Speaker Oscar M. Babauta, Covenant-Saipan; Saipan Chamber of Commerce president Juan T. Guerrero; and Hotel Association of the Northern Marianas Islands chairwoman Lynn Knight. [snip]
"Our position is to have a minimum wage increase we can afford under current economic conditions," Gov. Benigno R. Fitial was quoted as saying.
I would not trust anybody in this delegation to represent anything other than a protection of the system that has allowed twenty years of abuse. Pierce ran the Saipan Garment Manufactures Association until it was clear the Tan Family would be closing the factories down to move the work to their newly built Supply Chain Cities in China, then he jumped ship. Now, thanks to his old Tan Family pals running the CNMI government he’s found a soft landing. I wonder what this master of exploitation is selling as the governor’s special trade representative. Knight is yet another Tan Family alumni and I would guess that a little bit of digging would tie most of the rest of the delegation to the years of abuse.
If the folks on the CNMI want an honest dialogue about how to build a just, lasting and sustainable economy of the CNMI they need to keep the old Pirates of Saipan at home and send somebody who at least realizes that they have failed in controlling their own immigration, custom and labor laws.
These laws need to be federalized—they must be under control of US laws and US justice. That should not be open to negotiation.
What should be open to discuss is how to build the local economies without exploitation and how to help the indigenous people of the CNMI recover from the last twenty years of an economic system that hit their culture almost as hard as it hit the guest workers.
The CNMI needs a need beginning. That is where we should focus our energy.
These are the members of the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Please take a moment and let them know that you are concerned about the CNMI. Encourage them to extend US immigration, labor and custom laws to the Territory. And encourage them to work with new voices from the Marianas Islands to build a just, sustainable and lasting economic system to replace the corrupt mess infecting the Territory today.
Perhaps there will be some other people in the line-up for the Feb. 8th Hearing. Perhaps Fitial will drop out. Regardless, I will be watching this closely.
Now is a time for caution, but also a time to be heard. This is a small issue, but important.
I think if the netroots decides that bringing long-delayed justice to the CNMI is important and we raise the issue to Congress and candidates, we will help make this change a reality.
2007 seems like a good year to get this done.
Cheers.